this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
138 points (98.6% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

70239 readers
260 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

We heartily recommend visiting the free port of freemediaheckyeah (aka FMHY) while you sail the high seas, for all the freshest links the ocean has to offer.

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

🏴‍☠️ Other communities

FUCK ADOBE!

Torrenting/P2P:

Gaming:


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Last week's Supreme Court decision in Cox Communications reshaped the piracy liability landscape, creating new urgency for site-blocking.

all 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] smeg@infosec.pub 146 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Literally every single large AI provider admits to committing large scale piracy. No congressional response.

Some members of the public are watching HBO shows because they're poor? FULL FORCE OF THE LAW

[–] Jaegeras@piefed.social 14 points 4 months ago

But Bruh, Microsoft is allowed to do it because we're in business with Microsoft! - Government

[–] Mordikan@kbin.earth 10 points 4 months ago

"Rules for thee, not for me"

[–] alakey@piefed.social 51 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ahhhh, there comes the american own great firewall, fantastic...

Wonder if we will suddenly see this same bullshit pop up in all the pro age verification countries now or a tad later to make it less obvious.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Several such movements have been going around since around September 2025, with some countries' governments, e.g. Brazil's current one, pushing for such for longer.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Eyyy I love that this link is making the rounds. Can’t take credit for the graph, but happy to help broaden visibility.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious to know the connections between this and Collective Shout.

[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I guess they’re the group that was behind the Itch censorship.

The group rose to prominence in 2025 after lobbying for the digital distribution platforms Steam and Itch.io to remove hundreds of video games that they said featured themes such as rape, incest, and sexual violence, which resulted in Itch.io temporarily deindexing all not-safe-for-work adult games.[5] Collective Shout's campaigning against violent adult games, in collaboration with payment processors, has raised concerns about financial censorship,[6] effects on LGBTQ+ games,[5][6][7] and creative freedom.[8]

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Yes, but how does this connect together? I don't believe for a minute that it's coincidence.

[–] KillerWhale@orcas.enjoying.yachts 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

23.6m if this is true, I am disgusted at how cheap it is to corrupt an entire legal system.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 46 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good news for fascists since it means there will be an easy way to force ISPs to block all "unlawful" content like Wikipedia or any other site that gives educational information to refute their current agendas or reflects opposing opinions that they consider "alternative facts".

[–] Teknikal@anarchist.nexus 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Most isps just mess with the DNS, dnscrypt is a solution to make sure they can't. Best solution is not using dns in the first place though.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I have my own DNS server that caches from multiple backing servers as needed. I'm not worried about DNS blocking, it's never been effective. The issue is ISP level blocking usually isnt just DNS blocking, it's also involves IP level blocking, many of which dont work on IPv6 which is one reason (besides just resistance to replacing old hardware) it hasn't been adopted widely by consumer ISPs. If you have only a single, unchangeable (by anyone other than them) IP address, they have much more control and your traffic is much easier to track and manipulate.

And there is even lower level blocking at lower layers of the network stack. ISPs can intercept and mangle packet's destinations at any layer because your traffic must go through them and so your networking equipment must trust their equipment to properly route traffic. They don't do it now mostly because it means adding a lot more processing power to analyze every packet. I do it all the time at home to block ads and other malicious traffic. But if they're required to upgrade to allow for that level of traffic analysis, by law, then that opens the floodgates for all kinds of manipulation either politically or capitalistically nefarious in nature.

[–] dan@upvote.au 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Best solution is not using dns in the first place though.

Use DNS over HTTPS (or TLS or QUIC). I think some browsers use it by default now. If there's country-specific blocks, use your own recursive DNS server, or one in another country.

[–] Teknikal@anarchist.nexus 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Can still be messed with by the Isp not saying dns encrypt is a solution but it will bypass this, not much it can do against direct IP blocking mind you for that you need vpn or a service like tor/i2p.

Does stop the this has been blocked by court order type messages though and does it well.

[–] dan@upvote.au 1 points 4 months ago

Can still be messed with by the Isp

Not as easily though. It's like regular HTTPS - if anyone, including the ISP, tries a MitM (man in the middle) attack, you'll get a security error because the certificate won't be trusted. The only real way for a MitM attack to be successful is installing a custom root certificate on the client system.

Like you mentioned, IP blocking is harder to bypass, but that's unrelated to DNS blocking. IP blocking is harder to do if the site uses a CDN like CloudFront, BunnyCDN, Cloudflare, etc though, since a large number of sites use the same IPs.

[–] Teknikal@anarchist.nexus 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Sooner everything moves to something like i2p the better, there's no reason to be using the clearnet imo.

It's just a safer way of doing things and eventually things will be driven that direction anyway.

[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

I'm a bit behind on it, is i2p still dreadfully slow?

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 months ago

On the contrary, we should keep using clearnet to keep it easy for newcomers.

Authoritarian countries like the US can just fuck off and the rest of us will be fine. I've been doing clearnet piracy with no VPN for over 2 decades now.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

After 30 years of playing whack-a-mole with piracy sites, this time it will surely help.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Haven't other countries tried DNS level site blocking, and it's very easy to get around? Does it even make any difference? The strategy of ISP copyright letters has already trained Americans to use VPNs for this, it seems like the only difference will be that I will have to turn my VPN on before searching for torrents instead of just before actually opening my torrent client

[–] alakey@piefed.social 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

DNS blocking is a paper wall indeed. However, this is just a step one. VPNs are already a target, so this will help them with justifying step 2 - introducing DPI to monitor all traffic and proactively block new VPNs and other obfuscation methods. Step 3 is more or less final, it's when they realize this is also not quite as efficient as they'd like and they'll get tired of the constant cat and mouse game, so the solution would have to be whitelisting approved websites and blocking everything else. It's amazing for billionaires and their corpos as that makes it nearly impossible for new projects to enter the market, and it's great for governments that desperately want to be authoritarian, but pesky constitutions, privacy laws and some such are getting in the way.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

I'm totally fine with them thinking they did an effective job while leaving easy ways to circumvent their restrictions.

[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So how would this work theoretically? People in the states would just be prohibited from accessing certain sites and Google would remove them from results of searchs?

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Federal internet filter

Welcome to China

[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 months ago

Or USA, apparently

[–] dan@upvote.au 5 points 4 months ago

Google already remove results in certain countries based on local laws, and as a response to DMCA complaints.

[–] Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 6 points 4 months ago

Its crazy how well the foot in the door technique works.

[–] miniinstance@lemmy.today 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We need French people in the US to teach them how to burn down government buildings

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

Huh? That's just a myth... They are just like every other folks, blinded sheeps who sometime go into the streets doing nothing 🤫

Had any of the last decades street walks any important impact? Like Farmers? Nothing... Gillet jaune? Nothing... Police? Nothing... Get this bastard out of Presidency? Naaaah...

So yeah, Historically, French people are known for their revolutionary bloodlust, but that's long gone.